The Morning After

Your underwear

Are always the first thing to go missing,

Hiding under the bed,

Or tossed into some far corner.

He usually will get up first,

To make coffee, or go to the bathroom,

That is, if you aren't ashamed enough

To have snuck out during the early dawn light

First.

You will have roughly 15 minutes

To regain some semblance of the well-pressed self-control

You had the night before,

Sans brush, and sans mirror.

His roommates will be moving noisily around,

With no clue or no care

That you might still be there.

They talk about eggs as you try to find all your rings,

Loose, like how you're feeling about your morals.

You hold your forehead,

Sneaking glances at him in Ray Bans and a Sox hat,

From in between your fingers

As he drives you home.

You wonder if he'll call again.

XOXO

Assumption Eats Away At You Like Consumption.

I am an idiot.

Sometimes.

And assuming really does make an ass,

But mostly out of me.

So much energy spent,

Misplaced.

I am so glad

I have not spent this past week

Kicking her car every time I walk by.

(Twice a day.)

I take it back.

Not all.

But most.

XOXO

It's Only Smoke And Ashes, Babe.

There are some mornings when I wake up, and it's as if no time has passed at all.

Still fuzzy

Still dazed

Still noncommittal

To anything

But the next breath,

Still hesitant even on that option.

I wonder sometimes if what I'm doing now will fuck up the rest of my life for me.

The hard part if figuring out if I really want it to, or not.

I have no idea

How I got

Half these bruises.

I have no idea

And

At the same time,

All too good of an idea

How I got

Here.

XOXO

In Absentia

It's one of those mornings where it feel like marionette strings are pulling me awake and out of bed.

Girl like painted doll-- pale skin, blue eyes lined in black, pink lips. A blink and a small pick at a zit and the illusion is shattered in the mirror, a thousand fragments of life and reality falling to bounce on the tile floor.

I cough and my body clenches and unclenches, throat screaming in pain, wet globs on the sidewalk making a path to where I have been and where I am going like Gretel with tuberculosis. As I sit in class, the ghost of questing fingers creep along the inseam of my jeans, and my skin crawls, bile rising and threatening to revolt. The dust in the street whips through the air and against my cheek, and it feels and tastes and smells completely foreign to me.

Craning my head around to see his face, I realize I am looking for a dead man everywhere, but looking never brought anyone back to life.

I look at the invitation. I consider, carefully, both sides of the response. The weight of a “yes”, the finality of a “no”. Wonder about propositions. Wonder about lies. Wonder about what “having coffee” really means. I have been reading long enough to become excellent at reading in between the lines. Wonder where “coffee” ends and “something more” starts. Wonder where and when the time for explanations is. Wonder about how much sway resemblance has. Wonder if flattery will help. Wonder if I really am that sort of girl. I make my choice. Wait five minutes. Find myself back again, looking at those words. Reconsidering. I leave again. Come back. Decide on one thing at the moment—I desperately, desperately need someone to listen. I realize even as I navigate away that I will accept. Not now, but sometime soon. Sometime soon, I will be back, still needing an ear, a shoulder, some reassurance, a sounding board. Actors have stand-ins; why can’t we have stand-ins for life when the leads come down with something? Isn’t that what’s already in practice? Leading lady; leading man; understudy; stage manager like magician. I feel the tug on the invisible marionette strings again, dragging me across the stage. The audience claps. A brilliant performance. Red and white flowers sent. Red lights flash like strobes. Roxanne without Sting to validate her. No red dress, not tonight. You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right.

The first sob startles me. There's momentary wonder and glances around to see if the sound really came from me. The next thing I know, I am pounding the sides of my fists against the cold tiles of the shower's stall, the weak trickle from the showerhead flowing down my back as I plead with whoever will listen to me through the tears that fall, unnoticed, down the drain with the rest of the water. "Please, please, don't let me shut down again. I don't want to. I don't want to!" The voice is uncanny, desperate, someone speaking from inside of me whom I didn't know existed. She sounds small, scared, exhausted. She sounds like she has something to live for, but no idea how to fight for it.

I have always held that crying in the shower doesn't count. Then again, I've always held that crying is something that shouldn't be done at all.

I listen, even though I have absolutely no answers. If I could do something for you, believe me—I would. If I could afford to lay down enough for both your life and mine, I would. If I could be the kind of girl who runs hot and cold like you do, I would. And if I could somehow reassure you that actually not being afraid to pick one or the other and run a steady temperature won’t end your life or wreck your unknown future, I WOULD, if I had the slightest idea how to go about fixing you.

Broken people don't know how to fix each other any better than a shoemaker can fix a broken camera's lens. It's all about perspective, and if you aren't willing to see it from mine, then there is absolutely nothing I can do for you, no matter how badly you want someone else to do all the work and excavating of your buried skeletons for you. Scars and substances and smoke and mirrors aside, trying to play with your shards like a puzzle yields absolutely nothing but bloody fingers and a bad taste in my mouth-- Colgate and Camel Lights.

Walking away and waiting are pretty much the same thing. Both are about an expanse of time as tangible as miles and walls that need to be hurdled. A phone that doesn't ring is still a phone. It's not like a tree falling in the forest-- it still doesn't make any sound. Effort expended is a life-lesson in physics-- what you give is what you get, and I'm tired enough to not get out of bed anymore on my own accord. The Peroni on the nightstand and the ashtray on the balcony keep track of the fact that I am still alive. The shape under my sheets suggests I am not.

The alarm buzzes constantly. No matter how many times I paw at it, it doesn't stop keeping track of time slipping by. The numbers on the display mean nothing anymore. 7 at night and sleep. 4 AM and awake. 2 and full sunlight and waking up for the first time.

You need like a newborn child; like a ravenous baby; like Romulus and Remus searching for the she-wolf to suckle them, mortal women no good. The mirror doesn't lie well enough to me; the constant checking reaffirms it; the pain and the weakness cinch the deal. Mortal, mortal, mortal. It rings through me like a death knell. There is absolutely nothing I can do for you, if you are not willing to do anything in return.

“In absentia” is more than a role-call response.

XOXO

Short Words, Big Feelings.

For the first time today, I did not go directly out and have a cigarette after seeing the evidence of your indiscretion uncover itself, strewn so completely out in front of me like a particularly gruesome triple-homicide.

I waited three hours. Then I sucked two down in a row.

Shaking in the numbing night air, I opened up my mouth and felt the wind rip it straight from my lungs. And for the first time, I could actually feel it killing me.

XOXO

The All-American Normad's College Life, Excerpt 8:

"Unsanitary"

I find that the wall in the narrow bathroom, while not conducive to sitting forward on the toilet, makes a convenient rest for one’s drunken head while perched precariously sideways-ish on the seat, praying you don’t slip off.

I could almost brush my teeth and spit into the sink from this position, saving time, if I felt so moved to be so completely unsanitary.

Five minutes later, I am brushing my teeth while still seated on the toilet.

While sulla toletta.

Hello, Italy. I have arrived.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 7:

"Monsters"

Never speak ill of the dead.

Raised by a recovering Roman Catholic father, I have spent my life conditioned to forget the past downfalls of the deceased as he does—the caustic-tempered friend who committed suicide, his domineering mother—they become figurative angels in death.

My own forgiveness haunts me like a particularly hard-to-ignore ghost. Once upon a time, in boredom, in fascination, in extreme attraction, I got involved with a guy who introduced me to some of the more esoteric aspects of life. It was fun, for a time; we had a good run. But gradually, the longer I stayed, the more I got to see that the things I loved about him—his extreme honesty, his constant search for fun, his reliability to be there when needed—also were the things that showcased his downfalls. His alert blue eyes sunk into hollows surrounded by flesh so purple and tired-looking it appeared as if he’s been punched by someone with particularly large fists in both eyes. The leg next to mine jumped and twitched, just like his fingers. Calls would go missed, be returned later, after it wasn’t important anymore.

I started out very naive, and turned jaded quick. One day, I looked at him and realized I had no idea who he was anymore. I came back from a vacation to find him gaunt and tired and morose. I started turning away as soon as I saw the straight-edge and straw come out, not even waiting anymore for the moment when he bent over the table. I wanted to close my ears from the sound of that strange, wet snuffling.

Not one who should be pointing fingers or condemning anyone, but I hated it. I hated the subversive behavior that always kept my heart pounding a mile a minute; once the thing I loved most. I hated the red rawness that appeared around his nostrils; the gray sheen of his skin; the sweat. I hated not being able to get in touch with him, either physically or mentally. I signed myself on board thinking one man was captain, only to find out it was a completely different other. One, I loved. The other, I despised. The problem was, any given day, I didn’t know who would show up for active duty. If today was a day I could depend on someone else, or if I would be running to catch up with the show, picking up the broken pieces and trying to stick them back on before it was noticed.

To this day, say the word “coke” to me and watch closely what happens in my eyes. It’s a purely visceral reaction, one unlike most others I haven’t yet been able to master. Maybe it’s one of my truest reactions. Watch them snap wide with one blink, distrust and hatred appearing right before the lids meet, gone when they open again. Say “coke,” and I am as sure I will lose you as I lost the him I adored.

Me, who can’t remember the majority of a solid year of her life, lost to smoke, who slept amongst the empty bottles in high school, I know too well the siren call some things can have. I trace out lines between the substances—ok, understandable, uncomfortable, definitely not ok, I’m leaving right now—and wonder what sense, if any, these delineations make. My reasoning surely makes no sense—opium destroyed the entire Chinese Imperial world, and yet, because it comes from a flower grown in my own flower beds at home, I am tempted to give it an “understandable” when I should be saying “Get it the fuck away.” Chemicals I don’t trust—anything made by man therefore has our immense margin for error. I don’t panic if it’s organic, but at the same time, I’ve learned I can live without it just fine if need be. Or maybe that’s a lie. Maybe right now, clean overseas for a month, I want that back in my head and my bloodstream, the little floaters of “everything’s gonna be alright.”

In the end, I try to reconcile the good times with the not-so-good, and realize just like human error, human need is not infallible. In the end, I realize we all need a little bit of escapism and mental adventure. We all have some less-than-stellar habits. It does not define who you are, as some might think, but it does color your character and how people remember you.

For me, I still cannot speak ill of the dead, but I can speak ill of the powder-white nightmare that follows it. I still remember vividly the nightmares I would have—finding the twisted captain tucked away somewhere in my house, a monster in disguise of someone I loved and trusted, cooking things up in my own oven, chasing me into corners, forcing me to fight back. I would wake up crying, moved to tears by the images in my mind of burying my balled-up fists into that familiar and beloved form, again and again and again, listening to his yells. When I jumped ship, it took awhile, but they stopped. I found myself in the calm between storms. I took time. I mourned. I thought long and hard about where and how I can judge, or if I should even judge at all. I made peace, or so, I thought.

Two months ago, the nightmare came back again. All it took was that one word, and I woke with a start in the night, from a dream in which your dual twin appeared, gaunt, all the charm and comfort gone. Twisted, nasty, snarling at me with need I couldn’t relieve—I relived the nightmares, in a new form.

That night, I couldn’t fall back asleep, even though I could look over and see that it wasn’t true, at least for now. I lay in the partial darkness of the room, waiting for the monster to slide under the door, burrow deep in your nasal passages, take hold, and destroy again. I expected to see it raise its ugly head before my eyes, right then and there, summoned by its name like a demon. I didn’t dare try drifting off again, for fear of returning to the dream and waking you, sobbing and racking my body in my sleep. I wrestled with my demons until dawn.

You slept on. I sent a plea up to that particular angel.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 6:

"Dick"

Addicted. A-d-d-i-c-t-e-d. Note the sound that when said aloud clearly states “dick.” Because that’s what’s happening. You’re getting fucked. Hard.

I’ve pulled my jeans on, cuffed the bottoms, slid into my Uggs, fished my gloves and lighter out of my purse, and just barely wrapped my insistently questing fingers around the small cardboard box before my mind can catch up and put two-and-two together and register what’s happening. One moment, lying in bed, reading a mindlessly good escapist novel, snug and warm. The next, slammed by a want—no, a need—that has me moving faster and more surely than love, or money, or fear or any combination cocktail of the three has ever made me move before.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, hard. Two months from now, April 1st, will mark my two-year anniversary as a smoker. A year and half smoking Djarum Black cloves exclusively, and no overwhelming wants or needs. A casual smoker, as casual as a casual lover. A few times a week. I liked the process more than the end result, the inhaling and exhaling. Two months smoking these fucking, godforsaken, piece-of-shit, nasty-ass Camel Lights, and I’m reaching for the box like an expiring narc-fiend. I’m on the balcony with them every night like an illicit tryst, rain, cold, or clear skies. I’m spending 20 of them like I spend 20 dollars—quickly and with ruthless efficiency. On the way to classes. In the morning with my espresso, one bitter complimenting and cancelling the other. With a glass of wine before, after, or even during dinner. If I got for a walk, they’re in my pocket alongside my cell phone, which I would rather bear losing.

Mingling with the incessant and growing need is another emotion—disgust. Self-loathing. I, unlike some, am not too proud to admit my shortcomings as I momentarily contemplate quitting, and meet self-resistance to the thought and the realization that I can’t.

Chimney. Ashtray. Butt-stubber. Ash-flicker. Grinding filter between shoe sole and sidewalk. Leaving a trail of discarded stubs like a perverse Gretel. Filling the same lungs that fought with me for the first nine years of my life, already inherently weak. Go ahead. Hurt them more.

Like I said a mere month ago, and not in any sort of self-servingly pretentious or morbid deliciously snarky way, smoking is slowly committing suicide, one cigarette at a time.

Addict. I am a victim of myself. Dicked. Deep.

I resign myself, right now, right at this very second, that the day I hold my graduate school diploma and master’s degree in hand will be the day I enroll myself in a quitting program, flush the remainder of the pack, and invest in some Nicotine patches.

For now, though, I reach back over for the hastily discarded pack and count. Three left. Thank god I bought a new pack this afternoon.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 3:

“Lessons In Italian Living, Day Two: Eat Before You Drink.”

After walking around town all day, having digested nothing but the Florentine dust blown by the high winter winds around the Duomo since my small, very European breakfast of a croissant and half a peach saturated in its own liquid, I find I have drunk my glass of chardonnay at dinner before eating a little too quickly. I am a little too warm. A little too blurry. A little too quick to divulge. A little too excited with life, and a little too charmed with the hole-in-the-wall Robin and I managed to locate after walking a few half-circles in lower Florence, my Rick Steves’ guidebook held out in front of me like the Holy Grail. Written in Hebrew, of course. Because that little hand-drawn map is just as readable to me as Cyrillic symbols.

I am, in other words, “tipsy,” or, because it describes how I feel much better without the connotations of the giggling girls tipping over in hallways and I am not quite there yet, “light-headed.” (And so you know, I do not get “drunk”—plastering myself on other people, with an uncontrollably modulating voice, easily convinced to do stupid shit; I get “tipsy”—giggling and swaying in hallways and on sofas. Modulating voice and stupid shit I am convinced into perfectly sober.)

Anyway. The waiter asks for our orders. I’m pretty sure I butcher every word after “penne.” I ingest roughly a pound of pasta in chipped meat and cream sauce. Not feeling the pressure of tipping like we do in America, I leave a Euro for our abrupt yet serviceable waiter. I am happier about this Italian custom of non-tipping more than I’d care to admit. With my mathematical skills and hypersensitive apathy, leaving a tip is always the point in a meal that I hem and haw and feel guilty—not when I’m ordering. I imagine the waiter or waitresses’ children. The car that needs to be repaired. The college loans that have just started to come monthly calling. The electricity bill. What it would be like if it were me; how much I’d want someone to pay for my work. What my friends who wait have to deal with—the rude customers, orders in the middle of nowhere, and 17-cent tips. In other words, if you wait tables, you want me as your patron. I am a helplessly conscious push-over.

After, we back-track toward the Uffizi to find a proper gelato shop—one that puts real fruit in their window displays of the creamy, decadent treat—and I smoke my second cigarettes and eat my first gelato in Italy. Tiramisu-flavored. The cone is better than in America. I decide to say, fuck my state of affairs— chardonnay, smoke, and gelato go perfectly together.

XOXO

Better Than Pleather.

"Spinning in circles, halfway down our road to Nowhere, I smoked a bowl in shiny moonlight, bright as a newly-minted nickel, while thick snowflakes fell on me, making temporary homes on my hat and hair and shoulders until they dissolved into me, like reverse tears. If you haven't had this same experience, I highly recommend it to you.

I run my headphone wires through my hands, again, and again, and again. Literally, I am weaving sound between my fingers. I get stoner's cramps doing this; those aches you feel and can't be sure if they're real or not. In exchange, I am fertile ground for words; sentences; commas; the loving ampersand.

It's intense how people nest. Nearly ridiculous when you think about it. We collect and collect and collect to decorate what is only fleeting and temporary. For what? Comfort? Purely sensory. Even in my most aesthetically-pleasing, controlled environment, without internal peace of mind, none of it matters.

We build our emotional houses shoddily, and then wonder why drafts chill us to the core during the first signs of harsh winds.

Weather. Withstand. Dig down. Find what is missing within, and then release that beast in all of its' unrighteous and fully mortal petty glory. There is no shame in admitting loss and want, other than the shame we put on those emotions ourselves. There is no more human feeling than want; when you embrace it, it no longer hinders-- it becomes a building-block of character, if answered.

A conversation on wants will always be harder then it seems when talking to just yourself. Buck up. Practice saying "I want..." to your own shocked face in the mirror.

Blessed are those who want openly, for they are the ones who stand to inherit. No silent need was ever filled, unless you have psychic friends, that is. And if you do-- don't talk to me about it. Some of us are trying to evolve, here. We're throwing things up here with reckless abandon. It's like a shout in a dark tunnel-- Hello, can you read me?

And how can something that feels good be bad? Makes utterly no sense. Control is the issue. Everything is fine until it looses itself from the leash of Control. Keep it tight to you, like a dog, straining and baying at the cat, and you're good, if not utterly satisfied, save the noise. Life has an expiration date. Might as well make it as interesting as you can before it curdles."

Full Disclosure: Though I was never a S.W.E.D, there was a period (read: solid year+) in my life where I smoked heavily. Tweaker Tuesdays and Weed Wednesdays were celebrated like Naked Tuesdays were this past summer. Anyway, long story short, I quit, cold-turkey, in May. Nearly eight months, and then, another long story short, moving, the stress of finals finally (hahaha, bad puns,) being over, and the daily, unrelenting grind of moving back home for break+month made me take a running swan-dive off of the wagon like an Olympian who could taste the gold. (I could have just said "Michael Phelps" and got the gist in there through popular culture and innuendo. Damn. Almost too easy.)

It was borderline disgusting how easily it all came back. The first time, much to my dismay, there wasn't much of an affect. Last night, however, I took it straight to the face, like a noob. Like someone who had waited eight months; eagerly, anticipating, foaming at the mouth with want. As I suppose with any alcoholic, you don't know how much you've missed and wanted it until you have it again. And then-- lord. Lord, lord, lord. I don't know if you've ever denied yourself anything for solid months. (If you have, tell me about it. I'd love to know about your experience.) But for me, it was like the culmination of all the best times before, all rolled into one bowl, with all of the philosophy and feeling, and none of the paranoia or freak-outs. It was nirvana. It was purely sensory and totally existential, all at once.

One of the things that always remains the same is that when I'm in that state is that I always am up for writing and philosophizing. During my heyday, I engaged in one of the most philosophical conversations I've ever had. It was, I shit you not, about pleather. I don't remember specifics. I just remember sitting in a friends' living room and arguing-- passionately, defending my points, making clear and concise reasoning-- about pleather. PLEATHER. Imagine what I can do with solid material.

Last night, after engaging in one of the coolest experiences of my young life (immortalized above), I put myself down to bed with a rented copy of the movie "Into The Wild." Stunning. Awe- and thought-provoking. I absolutely require the book to further my generally happy existence. Knowing myself well, I had a journal and pen handy. Sure enough, I had to move it from the nightstand to beside me in bed because I kept having to pause the movie and reach over for it, time after time, after time. Blatant laziness, made worse by the night's activities, demanded as little movement as possible to keep the creative juices flowing. And so, I give you these small and relatively insignificant tidbits, though still worthy enough to provoke enough thought in me to make me feel they're worthy of post-age. Enjoy. And may you find equally liberating release.

XOXO

Snapshots.

The User and the Used

"I’m glassy-eyed in the mirror; that same vacant, pretty, coping stare Legs used to have.

My mind stutters on these thoughts, catching rays of sunlight and dust particles glinting in the air. My fingers cramp and release, heavy like my eyelids as I type on the black and white, trying to get the words down, depressing ‘backspace’ more and more as I realize letters are missing…
Overhead, planes fly people to their heart’s location.

My heart thumps heavily in the cage of my chest, bone and skin. The air is thick and smells like funk. I puff, puff, drag, feet resting on my windowsill, blowing the smoke out the window with the aid of a fan. My lighter sparks and catches, sparks and catches, and I wonder if this was how Legs did it, if that’s how he found his escape, like I am doing now. I buy, and de-seed and stem, and pack, and roll, and light, and inhale, and let the smoke trickle from my open lips like smoke monsters in the dark air, and I miss him, terribly, heart-wrenchingly, despondently, all at once.

It’s late, and I know I should put the laptop down, stop allowing myself free access into the confused sore that is my heart and laying it, splat, across the page, but it’s a masochistic exercise in life-lessons: you fall in love and let that person walk out of your life, and this is what happens. So you cry about it. You rationalize it. You get angry about it. You work at it. You smoke to avoid it at first, and then you smoke to embrace it. You mold it into something you can work with. You apply it. You find something that you can live with. You get happy about this, at least, and then you smoke more to continue. It’s a circle of use, misuse, and being used.

...The words tumble from fingertips that are dry and unfeeling on the keyboard, and I don’t even try to stop them. I can’t even stop my mind. Blink, there’s another memory I haven’t remembered since it happened. Flash, and I’m sweaty and I have a dry mouth and can feel everything around me in minute detail. Click, and I’m all the way gone on the sweet side effects of a love that doesn’t know better and a habit that shouldn’t have been allowed to grow. Snap, I’m back to square one."

(In)Pulse
Roused from my sleep,
I clutch pen
& grit teeth.
I cannot help when the words come
Anymore than you can help your addictions,
Already deep-seeded,
Or the singer can control her song
Or the bird his flight.
It is an impulse,
My scratch of pen on paper,
The snort of powder up your nose,
Much
Harsher
&
Methodical
As you cut lines,


Prepare your straw, ---Close one nostril, ---And make that
---------strange ---------snuffling ---------noise


That makes me cringe,
Though my back is turned to you,
Like it always is when I see you start your ritual.
The rise and fall of notes, much sweeter than this candy.
The feeling of air under a bird’s wing, much more free.
You are not sweet,
& you are not free.
But neither am I, chasing this trail of papers,
Always hoping the next one will be better.
You and I,
We aren’t so much un-alike,
Both of us with our willingness to fall prey,
To the things that gnaw on the insides of us.
It is to say,
“Because I can,”
& to do so.
It is to say,
“Who I am,”
& not resist it.

I tell you to stop using.
You tell me to shut the light off,
& go to bed.

Cold

"I’m warmest in sunlight. Not at night when you’re lying next to me, radiating body heat and safety and comfort, but when I’m walking in the cold air and the sunlight touches my face with rays gentler than your gentlest brush of fingertips. I think I have a gold-and-cream complexion (my nice way of saying what some call “pale” in tones reminiscent of disease and social awkwardness,) because I’m a sun-baby—my hair reflects it and my skin soaks it in, becoming almost luminescent. (Again with the “pale.”) I was born in June for a reason.

Your heat doesn’t stay long, just like your body—come the next morning, we part to go our separate ways and I’m cold until the next time you nuzzle your body beside mine, nook into nook, limb over limb, some strange sort of human pick-up-stick pile of us. The sun only leaves me at night, leaving me in your care, your heat, your warmth, knowing that you can never really replace it, even though you will try, and you will like to think that you’re the true center of my personal universe. But I say everything still revolves around one sun, and you, with your thin wrists and your love for sarcasm, are far too human. You are human, and you are cold.

Winter wind still blows even though the sun is in full shine mode. I tilt my face up at it through the smudged windows of the bus and close my eyes, seeing a disco ball pattern on the insides of my eyelids that dance like the free-love generation did on LSD. I’ve forgotten my coat at home, lulled by the sunshine into thinking that it’s warmer than it actually is, and you offer me yours.

The ancient Greeks’ sun-god was named Helios. The Romans called him Apollo. I call him warmth-bringer, light-maker, shadow-chaser. You call me sun-worshipper, heat-seeker, desert-baby. I call you mine, but I lie through my teeth when I say it. You are not mine, and I am not yours, not any more than I can claim to own the sun.

In the age of solar panels, people harness sunlight and bend it to suit their needs—heat, energy, power. I am just as much to blame, yoking you to my proverbial harness to suit my basic needs—companionship, entertainment, and because it’s convenient. You, I suspect, have done the same to me. We do it because it’s easy; because it’s what people expect of us. When you need, you need. It’s human to need, too human, and I have never been good at denying myself, the byproduct of a spoiled childhood. Although I have a hard time telling people out-loud what it is we’re playing at, I find it equally hard to be utterly blasé about it and say, “I keep him around for the sex.” What I don’t have a hard time telling them is what it isn’t. It isn’t forever. It isn’t immortal. It isn’t stationary, or reliable, or even planned. Just like the sun rises from the East every morning, it is predictable and we take it for granted. Once, you called me a frigid bitch. I didn’t deny it. I, just like you, am cold. That’s why I believe more in sunlight than I do in love."

Christmas, Tough-Love Style

"What do you think? Does it look good?"

"It could do without some of the more tacky ones."

"Like which?"

"Like that one, to the left of the middle. The lumpy red and green one that looks like a wreath."

"That is a wreath. I made it for you in Advent Workshop years ago."

"Oh. What about that white Styrofoam one?"

"That one, too. It's supposed to be a snowflake."

"The clothespin reindeer."

"Basically, anything you consider tacky, I made for you and Mom as a child."

Wounding people is so easy, we stride right on afterwards without even a second thought. We all do it.

There will always be that awkward tension between parent and child in the constant search for parental approval. Tides change-- though I will never feel quite up-to-snuff for my father, my mother now looks to me for my approval. I am off-guard and awkward, and don't know when and how to give it. This softens the dynamic of my father a bit, however.

But, then again, who am I to judge?

Choosing Sides

"Wall or nightstand side?" he always asks, even though the answer always remains the same. It's just the kind of guy he is.

He's already tucked in next to the nightstand. Half of me wonders what would happen if I asked for that side. Half of me chastises the other half for trying to make trouble when everything is exactly how I want it to be in the first place. Half of me sighs. All of me crawls up the bed instead.

"Wall," I answer. "Of course. That's where I always end up, anyway." Always between cool wall and warm body. I modulate temperature like a flesh thermostat. Always on his right-hand side. Just like how he always pushes me back down in his sleep to his arm and shoulder in the place of a pillow.

Whoever needed cotton and filling when you have a hot-blooded male, anyway?

After the third night, I wised up. If Manhammoud won't let you go to the pillow-mountain, you bring the pillow to you.

Drip-Drop

Part One:

Writers: Black depressions, over-active imaginations, mental illnesses, and substance abuse. We are an under-whelmingly cheery lot.

Bathtub and beer. Bathtub and half-bottle of wine. Bathtub and a vodka concoction. It's all the same to me.

I think writers have an affinity for bathtubs because there's always the possibility of drowning oneself if the mood so strikes you. I'm sure some author must have tried holding their breath a minute too long after an unfavorable review. (Note to Self: Research this.)

I lounge in the convex shallows of the tub, one knee propped up under the facet, regulating water temperature by feel, my right kneecap bright red because I like it scalding hot. (Might as well live if you're going to be alive.) I'm reading Abbey's "The Fool's Progress" and feeling quite foolish myself, feeding this writer's malaise of mine so indulgently. Later, I will try sticking my toes in the jets, reverse whack-a-mole.

Part Two:

I turn the radio on, but leave the lights off. The moment I step into the shower and close the door behind me, my hair instantly and decidedly curls up in the trapped humidity. (Fact: I have naturally wavy hair. You will probably never see it.) The Presidents of the United States of America remind me in "Peaches" (Fact: Meant to give that CD back...) that the acoustics of the shower are the best I've ever found for singing (Fact,) but these glass walls won't hear my voice today. Soap in silence. Shampoo in solitude. Condition in consternation. (Fact: Alliteration is one of my many writer's vices. Along with verbosity and cliches.)

"Must stop playing hermit," I tell myself. "That's a direct order. Cheer the fuck up."

Circa Bankruptcy

Christmas night. The dog is napping in the backseat, taking up the entire bench, and it's nearly midnight; not Christmas any more. I'm driving and smoking at the same time, because that's one of the things I do know how to do in full multi-tasking glory. I've got the windows cracked because, silly to admit, I am scared of harming an innocent animal's lungs. Mine are already damned. So my nose is cold so his lungs can remain free from any more second-hand smoke. Silly. But the windows are still down.

It's nearly dead downtown. I'm tempted to make a silent joke about the graveyard shift, but it would be almost too easy. I don't know what called me here, but I needed to fill my eyes with it. The sight of a sheriff's cruiser lingering at a red light reminds me I still haven't replaced a front headlight that's out. I skulk past and hope Christmas spirit is enough to get me out of a ticket. I don't have the time, money, or desire to pay for either a new bulb or a ticket. I'd rather just take Plan A and flee the country. Har har.

The streetlights that rise up around me are festooned in white Christmas lights that wind around them and wreaths. The old, retro buildings, once freshly painted and proud, slouch into their foundations. Half of the storefronts are empty; "For Sale" and "For Rent" signs are the only things that occupy windows. The city of my childhood is gone. Instead, hardscrabble has taken hold.

At seven, I used to walk the four blocks down the hill from the public library to my dad's shop. At twenty, I lock my car doors as I come to a stop outside the building that used to be my father's. No lights. No gold glistening from overhead lighting in the display cases in the windows. Everything is quiet; not even the whisper of falling snow to make white-noise. I'm caught half-in and half-out of the past and the present, the crossroads of What Used To Be and The Cold, Hard Truth. Somewhere in the last twelve years, I missed this all changing. You come home, an almost-adult, and you suddenly see it all. It's alarming. It makes you wonder where it went wrong; if there was something you could do; what signs you missed and how. And if a city can change like this, unnoticed until it's over, what else can?

The dog lets out a snore. Suddenly tired, I take a last long draw and then stub my cigarette out on my side-view mirror, the plastic burned and crusted from doing it so many times in the same place before. I pull a U-ey and head for home as the clock ticks in a new day.

"And miles to go, before I sleep, and miles to go, before I sleep," I remember as I roll up the windows and rub the feeling back into my nose.

Implosion

"I'm done with being looked through. When you look at me, it's almost enough to make me believe I could catch fire. Spontaneously combust in being someone."

---

Excuse me for just thrusting you into that, but one of my professors, a very wise man who is pretty much the reason I came to Champlain, once said that there is a time and a place for disclaimers, and in front of your writing is neither the time, nor the place. So I guessed I was wise to heed him-- his advice hasn't done me wrong yet.

The one good thing about being home and broke is that it's giving me lots of time to write. And write. And write some more. The above are some pieces of writing I've been busy resurrecting and breathing new life and words into for awhile (the first piece was an excerpt from a longer work from Creative Non-Fiction; (In)Pulse and Cold are both pieces I read recently at a gathering that went over well, and since people asked for copies, decided to put them here so I don't have to individually email. Laziness is a vice I posses.), as well as some short snippets that have come to me recently, as always, in the most awkward of places. (Mostly, the shower. In the shower, hands sudsy, not a pen or piece of dry paper in sight, is where I get all my best ideas. I have learned to play them on repeat like a broken cassette tape between my brain and my lips to remember them until I get out and run, dripping, for a flat surface and something to write with.) Muses be damned. They always come at the worst times.

XOXO